


Sunk Cost

by Syntax



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, No Dialogue, Pre-Canon, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25094146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: The curse of foresight is not seeing every possible tragedy that can result from your actions.The curse of foresight is seeing every possible joy that can result from your actions, and knowing you must cast them aside.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 60





	Sunk Cost

**Author's Note:**

> hi i'm not dead but i am very tired and i have been trying to write this one idea for like a month so just take it

The White Palace was full of phantoms visible only to its king's own eyes. The fleeting visions of a god's Foresight, potential futures all superimposed on top of each other, crowding out the reality under and over and around them until all that was left was a cacophony of voices and bodies present and potential.

The Pale King knew this was what his life would become when he relinquished his form. He had prepared for it. He had accepted it. Welcomed it. Being able to see all possible futures at once was a very handy ability for a ruler to have, guiding his people to the best possible present, the best possible future. The possibilities relinquished in the name of progress had never been too entrancing to tempt him away from his goal. The cost of utopia had never been worth more than a second glance.

And then... The statue atop the Crystal Spire had been uncovered. Then the Infection had come.

Then the layers of reality spread out before him grew more and more complicated by the day.

A scant word had once before only had an impact on the gossip of his courtiers, the fashions of the Cavernous City above. A flick of the claw had once extended only to the lives of a few bugs. A choice of possibility had once been limited to mere window dressing, to the implementation order of a myriad ordinances, to the words of visiting dignitaries, to the conditions of treaties and laws and letters. To hold himself as aqueous, to ebb and flow and change in support of whatever future he desired was a simple thing.

A scant word now meant the difference between a bug living to see the end of the month or falling to dreaming despair and attacking the rest of their fellows. A flick of the claw now meant a dozen different things to a dozen different bugs, and the same measures needed to save most will not be enough to save all. A choice of possibility grew more strenuous, more painful, as even the smallest action—the smallest _inaction_ —caused the greatest of changes to his kingdom's future.

He was used to adapting to what Hallownest needed of him. He would do what he could to save them. Send for doctors, send for shamans, make treaties and bargains and threats as needed. Close down road ways, open up stagways, act in whatever manner brought the most benefit no matter how unpopular or unproductive it seemed for those who could not See as he did.

He could not save them all. No future would allow Hallownest to purge the infection unscathed. The Pale King accepted this; he had no other choice in the matter. But though the survival of all his citizens was impossible to obtain, he refused to simply give up and not preserve as much as he could.

If a bug must fall so a battalion may survive, then so be it. If a family must fall, if a village must fall, if a district must fall so that one more street one more district one more city could be saved, then he was prepared to do whatever he needed in order to see that possibility come to fruition. 

There was no way to kill the Old Light that plagued his people. Not quickly. The final breath of a god was a long, drawn out thing, and one that he did not have the time to wait for when her death throes were destroying all that he had worked so hard to create. The possibility of defeat had visited itself upon him many times before, the possibility of sealing her, of restricting her, of blocking her access to the dreams of his people. He knew what he would need to do. He knew what he would need to sacrifice. The cost of utopia was a heavy one, but one that he would pay gladly every time.

Letters were sent. Plans were constructed. Bargains were made. He knew what was required of him for the future that he sought. Infinite realities to pick from, but only a few clawfuls of choices to make. His path was set. His will was unwavering. The Beast bore him a daughter. The White Lady bore him millions.

He was not prepared for the change these new additions would impose upon his plans.

Even knowing that the eggs his Root had produced were to be thrown into the Abyss, even knowing the vessels were a necessary sacrifice for the continuation of his kingdom, even knowing that his path had already been decided on—the Pale King looked upon what would be his children for the first time, and all he could see were the myriad futures where they would be alive and healthy and happy. So many smiling faces. So many brilliant souls. He could see how short their lives would be, how they would burn so bright before being cut down by the Infection, but even a few scant years of happiness in the White Palace was more than the Abyss could offer them. Most of them would die. All of them would die, really, and live again as a hollowed out shell.

He thought he was used to sacrifice by now. He thought he was used to choices that measured success and failure with living beings. To follow through with his plans and cast his children into darkness for the sake of the kingdom—he had never before made a choice so difficult. He had hoped he would never have to do so again. He knew he would. Bringing forth the Pure Vessel from the Abyss hurt more than anything the Pale King had ever tried to do.

There were two vessels upon that platform, not one, but the second could not be acknowledged if Hallownest stood any chance of continuing. They could never meet but for a brief exchange of glances. But he could See them together. He could see the slightest sound, the slightest glance, the slightest tilt of the head directing the first child to gaze upon the second, and all would be ruined. The vessels would embrace and love and grow and fight and die and he would let them do so in whatever way they wished in repentance for damning them to such a horrible world anyways. He would do it. In a heartbeat he would do it.

So he forced himself not to waver in his gaze or fumble in his words or motion with his claws. He forced himself to leave. He forced himself to let his only other surviving child fall back into the darkness. Let that one learn and grow and love and die in its own time, far from now. The Pure Vessel had ascended, and the refuse and regret of its creation would be sealed away.

He spent his days training the vessel, trying desperately to ignore the field of possibilities that followed it through the White Palace. The Hollow Knight must be perfect. The Hollow Knight must be empty. The Hollow Knight must know neither thought nor emotion nor pleasant memory. Forcing himself to maintain the required distance, to uphold the required scrutiny, to inflict required cruelty on his own flesh and blood in the face of all that even a few moments of kindness could shape them into was agonizing.

They could be so wonderful. They could be so loved.

The day the Gendered Child was presented to him, his world grew more agonizing still.

Bright smiles and happy memories and honorable successions and loving relationships and tragic endings. Every possibility for who and what she could become splayed out before him at once, superimposed on top of each other, crowding out the reality under and over and around them until all that was left was a cacophony of voices and names. Mandrake the diplomat, loved by all. Drosera the explorer, founder of a new kingdom. Budwing the warrior, slayer of giants. Caracole the shaman, link to the gods. All much happier than Hornet the sentinel, protector of Hallownest, and all so much more tragic for their loss.

The Pale King would need to be cold to create Hornet. To throw all joyous moments away and leave her to grow bitter and strong under Vespa's care. There would be no loving daughter. There would be no charming successor. There would only be a broken demigod, harsh and hardened and willing as he must be to weigh progress against a living cost and sacrifice all that must be sacrificed to ensure a proper future for Hallownest.

She would never forgive him. She would never even consider it an option.

Perhaps that was for the best. He would never be able to forgive himself either.

The Gendered Child was passed between Herrah and the White Lady like a ball was passed between children, catching only faint glimpses of her father and her elder sibling as they trained for something she would never truly understand. She would one day be sent to Vespa as her birth-cursed sibling would one day be sent to the Black Egg, and at that point their futures would be set. Only his direct intervention would be enough to change their fates from that point forward.

They would be gone. They would be safe. And he would be alone in a dying palace, with nothing but the visions of what could have been to keep him company.

His children would leave him. His knights would leave him. His wife would leave him. Precious few of them would survive to see the day of the Old Light's end. And for what?

A Hallownest that would last beyond the infection? A Hallownest that would grow to even greater heights? A Hallownest that would spend its first years scavenging from the corpse of its former self? A Hallownest that would remember him as a monster? A Hallownest that he would never even live to see?

It was almost funny, in retrospect, in prospect.

The majority of a wyrm's life was spent in darkness. Blind, every one of them. Relying on scent and touch and taste, and those few senses afforded only to the divine which have no names at all. It was an existence that the Pale King had been glad to leave behind him. It was an existence that the Pale King desperately longed to return to.

Blind to the visions. Blind to the possibilities. Blind to the consequences. Caring of nothing but where to find his next meal.

The cost of utopia was unbearably great. But the cost of all he had sacrificed to achieve it was far greater still.


End file.
